Lena Rivera
François Boucher was a prolific French painter, draughtsman, and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. He was born in 1703 and died in 1770, marking the end of his painting career. Boucher's work was synonymous with the French Rococo style, and he is known for his idyllic pastoral scenes and classical historical paintings. He was also a skilled engraver and etcher, producing around 180 original copperplates. In the last decade of his life, Boucher began to favour brown chalk, a fabricated medium.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Last year of paintings | c. 1769 |
| Year of death | 1770 |
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What You'll Learn
In the last decade of his life, Boucher favoured brown chalk
François Boucher, a native of Paris, was a prolific and versatile artist who worked in the Rococo style. He is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. Boucher's paintings, such as "The Breakfast" (1739), showcase his mastery of genre scenes, and he is considered a master of the genre scene. In addition to his paintings, Boucher also designed theatre costumes and sets, and his art influenced the comic operas of his time.
Boucher's career lasted some fifty years, and he claimed to have produced ten thousand drawings during this time. He was incredibly prolific, working in virtually every medium and genre. Boucher's oeuvre includes pastoral scenes, nudes, religious, historical, and mythological subjects, book illustrations, landscapes, genre scenes, and designs for tapestries, porcelain, and fountains.
While Boucher favoured black and red chalk earlier in his career, he turned to dark brown chalk in his later years. He also created finished drawings in pastel and occasionally drew on coloured paper. Boucher's drawings were not only preparatory studies for his paintings but also finished works of art in their own right, and they were highly prized by collectors.
Boucher's work was not without controversy, and he faced criticism for his ebullient Rococo style and the triviality of his gallant iconography. Despite this, he left a lasting legacy in the art world, with his name becoming synonymous with the French Rococo style. He died in Paris on 30 May 1770, leaving behind a body of work that continues to be celebrated and studied.
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He died in 1770, leaving behind a legacy in art history
François Boucher, the French painter, draughtsman and etcher, died on 30 May 1770, leaving behind a significant legacy in the world of art. Boucher was synonymous with the French Rococo style, and his work in this area is considered his most original contribution to painting. Boucher's reinvention of the pastoral—an idealised landscape populated by shepherds and shepherdesses in silk dress, enacting scenes of erotic and sentimental love—was closely tied to the comic operas of his friend Charles-Simon Favart, for whom Boucher produced stage and costume designs.
Boucher's work was perfectly compatible with the intimate scale and refined taste of the court of Louis XV and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, who was a great admirer of his work. Boucher's paintings, such as 'The Breakfast' (1739), a familial scene, demonstrate his mastery of the genre scene, where he often used his own family as models. These intimate family scenes contrast with the licentious style seen in his Odalisque portraits, which led to claims by art critic Denis Diderot that Boucher was "prostituting his own wife".
Boucher's work was in high demand, and he was highly adept at marketing it. He provided designs for decorative arts, from porcelain to tapestry, and his work was reproduced in engravings and on porcelain and biscuit-ware. Boucher's impact on the decorative arts of the Rococo period in France and throughout Europe cannot be overstated.
In addition to his paintings, Boucher designed theatre costumes and sets, tapestries, and decorations for court celebrations. He was also a gifted engraver and etcher, etching around 180 original copperplates. He was a prolific and varied draftsman, and his drawings served as preparatory studies for his paintings, designs for printmakers, and finished works of art collected by enthusiasts.
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He was criticised for his art's lack of moral weight
François Boucher, a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He is perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century. Boucher's most original contribution to Rococo painting was his reinvention of the pastoral, a form of idealized landscape populated by shepherds and shepherdesses in silk dress, enacting scenes of erotic and sentimental love. This form was closely tied to contemporary comic operas, especially those produced for the Théâtre de la Foire by Boucher's friend Charles-Simon Favart, for whom he occasionally produced stage and costume designs.
Boucher's paintings, such as The Breakfast (1739), a familial scene, show how he was a master of the genre scene, where he regularly used his own wife and children as models. These intimate family scenes contrast with the licentious style seen in his Odalisque portraits. The dark-haired version of the Odalisque portraits prompted claims by the art critic Denis Diderot that Boucher was "prostituting his own wife". The Blonde Odalisque was a portrait that illustrated the extramarital relationships of the King. Boucher gained lasting notoriety through such private commissions for wealthy collectors and, after Diderot expressed his disapproval, his reputation came under increasing critical attack during the last years of his career.
Boucher's flourishing studio was the training ground for many young artists, the greatest of whom, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, would surpass his master in invention and ingenuity if not in public renown. During the 1750s and 1760s, Boucher’s increasingly saccharine style and repetitive compositions came under attack from anti-rococo critics such as Etienne La Font de Saint-Yenne and Denis Diderot, who saw Boucher’s lighthearted subject matter and fluid, coloristic style as frivolous and morally corrupt. Diderot, whose opinion on Boucher’s merit was decidedly mixed, famously wrote of him in his review of the 1761 Salon, “That man is capable of everything—except the truth”.
Boucher’s fertile imagination and unified aesthetic were also well suited to the medium of tapestry, and the manufactory of Beauvais had many commercial successes based on his designs, including the series Fêtes Italiennes, which went into production in 1736. In 1755, he was appointed head of the royal tapestry manufactory at Gobelins, where he continued to collaborate on the design of successful series of tapestries. These included the set produced for Croome Court in the 1760s, in which compositions after his designs were set into medallions against a trompe l’oeil damask ground. Boucher’s greatest skill as a designer, the ability to subjugate disparate sources to his aesthetic, was also his greatest failing in the eyes of later critics, especially as Neoclassicism supplanted the Rococo in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
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Boucher was a master of the genre scene
François Boucher was a prolific French painter, draughtsman, and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century. Boucher died in 1770, having clung to the Rococo aesthetic even as it lost favour.
Boucher's most original contribution to Rococo painting was his reinvention of the pastoral, a form of idealized landscape populated by shepherds and shepherdesses in silk dress, enacting scenes of erotic and sentimental love. This form was closely tied to contemporary comic operas, especially those produced for the Théâtre de la Foire by Boucher's friend Charles-Simon Favart (1710–1792), for whom he occasionally produced stage and costume designs. The Interrupted Sleep (49.7.46), painted as an overdoor for Madame de Pompadour's château at Bellevue, exemplifies this type of subject matter. A fetching shepherdess, clad in ivory-coloured silk, lacking all trace of dirt or labour, is asleep and vulnerable to the mischief of a shepherd boy, tickling her cheek with a piece of straw.
Boucher's paintings and artistic style were always in demand, and in addition to paintings, he created theatre costumes and sets, tapestries, and decorations for court celebrations. His work was prominent enough that it was reproduced in engravings and on porcelain and biscuit-ware. By the time of his death, Boucher's name and body of work had become synonymous with the Rococo style.
Boucher was also a gifted engraver and etcher. Boucher etched some 180 original copperplates. In the last decade of his career, the artist began to favour brown chalk, a fabricated medium. Vertumnus and Pomona (60.176.2) dates to the last decade of his career when he began to favour brown chalk, a fabricated medium, and is a recension of a subject that had long fired his imagination, beginning with an etching he made in 1727 after a painting by Watteau of the same subject.
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He was a native of Paris and studied under his father, Nicolas Boucher
François Boucher was a native of Paris, born on 29 September 1703. He was the son of Nicolas Boucher, a lesser-known painter and lace designer, from whom he received his first artistic training. Boucher's father was a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc.
At the age of seventeen, Boucher's painting was admired by the painter François Lemoyne, who appointed him as his apprentice. However, after only three months, Boucher left to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars. In 1720, he won the Grand Prix de Rome for painting, but financial difficulties delayed his studies in Italy until 1725. During the interim, he honed his skills in painting and printmaking, exhibiting several works at the annual Exposition de la Jeunesse in 1725.
Boucher's early works were influenced by artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and Antoine Watteau. He was particularly interested in the Italian countryside and the Baroque masters. This influence can be seen in his early paintings, such as "Imaginary Landscape with the Palatine Hill from Campo Vaccino."
Upon his return to Paris around 1731, Boucher shifted his focus to large-scale mythological paintings and soon gained official recognition through royal commissions. He became a member of the Royal Academy in 1734, and his career progressed rapidly, with promotions to Professor and then Rector of the academy.
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Frequently asked questions
Boucher died on the 30th of May 1770 in his native Paris.
Boucher's last painting was likely completed in 1769, a nude sketch titled "A Nude Woman Reaching to the Right". In the last decade of his life, he began to favour brown chalk, a fabricated medium.
Boucher worked in virtually every medium and genre, creating works for porcelain, tapestry, theatre costumes, and sets. He was also a gifted engraver and etcher, etching some 180 original copperplates.
